Essential Skills Every First-time Manager Should Master

Managing people is both a huge responsibility and a great honor. For the first-time manager, making the transition from being an individual contributor to a manager can be a dramatic shift. A common mistake organizations make is to promote high-performing individuals into the role of manager, assuming that their track record of success alone will assist them in making this shift. The reality is that the skills that served a person as an individual may not serve him or her as a manager.

Another pitfall for first-time managers is that without proper support and development, they misjudge their role or become paralyzed from fear of doing the wrong thing. Additionally, they may not receive adequate training to prepare them for their new role. For these reasons, a staggering amount of first-time managers fail to accomplish their goals and develop meaningful relationships with their people within the first year of being promoted, which means bright and promising people are promoted into positions they’re not ready for and then are left to chart their own course.

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Leadership Strategies for Making Change Stick

Recent studies show that as much as 70% of all change initiatives fail. Why?